It’s been over three years since our last KFC update, but happily this time the news is so good you might be tempted to lick your fingers!

Super Chinese search engine Baidu has partnered with the Louisville-based fowl giant Kentucky Fried Chicken to trial a new “smart restaurant” in Beijing. The smart bit is that the restaurant has terminals which use face recognition software to suggest a choice of meal, based on the customer’s age, gender and mood. A worked example might be as follows: “Hi – you appear to be a 47 year old man who is disillusioned with the state of the world in 2017 – have a family bargain bucket!”

However, disappointed fast food enthusiast and former Guns N’ Roses guitarist Buckethead (pictured) is reported as saying that the face recognition terminals “simply do not work”.

65 years after KFC first opened its doors, the identity of the 11 herbs and spices that go into founder Colonel Harland Sanders’ “original recipe” coating remains a matter of intense speculation . However, if I had to guess, I would go for salt, black pepper, white pepper, celery salt, garlic salt, thyme, basil, oregano, dried mustard, paprika and ground ginger.

It’s Day 3 of the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro and China has made a strong start – sitting four medals behind Trump’s USA with 8 medals and equal in the gold medal standings, having taken top spot in the synchronised 3m springboard (Wu Mingxia & Shi Tingmao), 10m air pistol (Zhang Mengxue) and 56kg weightlifting (Long Qingquan).

But if we put aside the swimming pool handbags between freestyle rivals Sun Yang and “the swimming gala” Mack Hortan, the biggest controversy for Team China has come at the top of a flagpole where sharp-eyed observers have spotted a glaring fault. Can you spot the difference?

Great flag!

Argh! My eyes!

There was uproar, with CCTV declaring “The national flag is the symbol of a country. No mistakes are allowed!”. Although it later emerged that the faulty ensign was manufactured in China.

Chinese President Xi Jinping would make the ideal husband. He is caring – both for his wife and the nation; he is rich, with an estimated family wealth of £188 million (impressive on his ministerial salary of about £8,000 per annum); he has a good sense of humour – one of his recent speeches in his US visit reportedly included a “joke” referencing the Netflix series House of Cards; and he is cute (see video below).

While the British media spends its time snouting around its leaders’ penchant for pork scratchings, here is a disturbingly excellent video reminding us that not all leaders are bad folk:

Further hagiographic videos include the viral hit single charting the love Xi Jinping has for his wife. ‘Xi dada loves Peng mama’

Now, people in some quarters have claimed that Brushduck was not even aware that the Asian Cup – Australia 2015 was taking place, let alone that China was taking part, having qualified for their 11th straight championship. While there might be some truth to this, it doesn’t matter, as we now bring you this Sports Report special on China’s progress in the competition.

China breezed through the early phase, topping Group B after smashing grieving Saudi Arabia 1-0, pulverising coastline-challenged Uzbekistan 2-1 and mullering long-time ideological pals North Korea 2-1 – Jiangsu Sainty’s Sun Ke (孙可) with a brace making it 3 in 3 in the competition.

Sun Ke celebrates v North Korea

Unfortunately it all came to a dramatic end at the Brisbane Stadium against the home nation in the last-8, as China failed to take advantage of early pressure and veteren Socceroos’ talisman Tim Cahill ensured his side’s progress with a couple of beauties, including this overhead effort:

Australia take on UAE in the semis as they hunt for their first Asian Cup triumph on their fourth attempt.